Australia Day is
celebrated January 26th each year, commemorating the arrival
of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788.

NOTE: My friends from Australia were
kind enough to clarify the "correct" date the
holiday is celebrated. While I was doing research for this page
it was rather confusing
because there were conflicting dates mentioned. Thank you Peter
& Vikki for your help!!!

"Australia day is actually on
the 26th of January,
it was celebrated on the last Monday
in January up until about three years ago, the government then
decided it should
be celebrated on the actual day of discovery, so the public
holiday is now on the 26th.
If the 26th falls on
a weekend a holiday is then declared on the
following Monday (Australians love public holidays)."

Australia Day Information from
Compton's Encyclopedia:"American
Revolution dispossessed Great Britain of its American colonies,
another remote settlement had to be
found where surplus convicts could be sent. The site chosen was
Botany Bay, on the southeastern coast of
Australia, which had been discovered by James Cook in 1770.

A fleet of 11 ships -- with Arthur Phillip, the first governor of
the settlement, in charge of 160 marines and
729 convicts -- weighed anchor in Portsmouth, England, on May 13,
1787, and reached Botany Bay the following
January. Finding it too barren, sandy, and shallow for permanent
settlement, Phillip investigated the next inlet to
the north. There, spreading its fingers of deep water into
sheltered sandstone promontories, he found "one of
the finest harbours in the world, in which a thousand sail on the
line might ride in the most perfect security."
The harbor, which had been discovered and named by Cook earlier,
was Port Jackson -- now better known as
Sydney Harbour. The city that grew up around the famous harbor
takes its name from Lord Thomas Townshend
Sydney, the British home secretary to whom Governor Phillip
reported. Phillip's First Fleet was unloaded 8 miles
(13 kilometers) upstream at Sydney Cove on Jan. 26, 1788--now
celebrated as Australia Day."
~Above Information from Compton's Encyclopedia~

Information about Arthur Phillip
from Compton's Encyclopedia:

"PHILLIP,
Arthur (1738-1814). The first European colony established in
Australia was founded by the British
naval commander Arthur Phillip. The convict settlement at Sydney
in New South Wales was set up in 1788,
and Phillip acted as its first governor.

Phillip was born on Oct. 11, 1738, in London, England. He studied
at Greenwich and served in the navy until
his retirement in 1763, when he married and planned to settle
down to life as a farmer. By 1776 he was back
on board ship in service to the government of Portugal. In 1786
the English government assigned him to
form a convict settlement in Australia, a task to which he was
well suited.

The first fleet set sail with 11 ships on May 13, 1787. Despite a
mutiny plot, the fleet arrived in New South
Wales on Jan. 18, 1788. Phillip named the colony Sydney after the
secretary of state, Viscount Sydney.
He established good relations with the aborigines and with their
help explored the area around Sydney.
Phillip's ill health forced him to return to England in December
1792. He was made an admiral
in 1814 before his death on August 31 of that year."
~From Compton's Encyclopedia~